In somewhat of a surprise, the nation’s two largest wireless carriers – AT&T and Verizon – came away from the FCC’s spectrum incentive auction nearly or completely empty handed. While much was made of the fact that T-Mobile reportedly took home 45 percent of all low-band spectrum sold, less was made of AT&T and Verizon’s haul, mostly because there wasn’t much to talk about.

The nation’s two largest wireless carriers weren’t very active during the FCC’s incentive auction of 600 MHz airwaves—Verizon, in fact, spent nothing. But many smaller operators and would-be service providers moved aggressively to add to their spectrum portfolios. As new maps from Mosaik illustrate, nobody was more aggressive than T-Mobile.

Last week, the results of a hugely important Federal Communications Commission auction came out. The Commission was selling the rights to use re-purposed TV spectrum to wireless carriers, and T-Mobile spent $8 billion to buy far more spectrum than anyone else.

The spectrum being auctioned is particularly valuable low-band airwaves that work better in rural areas and indoors — two areas that T-Mobile has struggled with, compared to Verizon, which has long held the licenses to a large amount of low-band spectrum.

But a new analysis of the data shows that while T-Mobile might have spent far more than any other company in the auction...